My Purple Quilt

 I have always referred to this quilt as "my Purple Quilt". The kit was called Longing for Spring. I love the quilt top, but I almost love the backing even more. It's called lilac toile. Just the name of it is pretty.

The green leaves I quilted on the sashing really pop against the lilac.

I did some complicated free motion quilting on this and the toile pattern just makes it better. This was the third quilt I ever made, the second I ever free motion quilted, the first I ever bought a kit for, and the first I ever followed a pattern for.

Though I tried to make myself follow the pattern, I ended up changing it anyways. It was supposed to have no sashing between the stars. Instead, the pattern called for large purple ric-rac to be sewn on before you quilted it. I didn't like the ric-rac, and I was scared to free motion quilt around it. I did some math and found that I had enough of that one dark purple to use it for sashing. I also made the border wider because I just love the fabric! It has a silvery overlay that sparkles on the flowers.




With my quilting, I tried to make the stars look like flowers. In the center of each "flower" I did some very small dogwood quilting. For the triangular "petals", I stitched just inside the edge, and did the same for the corner squares.

The green on the sashing is probably my favorite part of the quilting. It shows up just enough that
you can see it from far off, but doesn't completely clash with purple.

I also stitched just inside the sashing with bright white thread. With all this stitching just inside the shape, you can tell I avoided stitching in the ditch!

Partially through the quilting process I walked in on the morning sun shining on my quilt.
I looks very flat without the quilting!

This quilt made me want all my binding from then on to be either plaid or some type of stripes. Before I was always scared of striped fabric, but I just love how this binding turned out! In this picture, I folded the quilt to show the contrast of the binding against the quilt top and backing.

I took the dog ears from the flying geese blocks that the stars are made of and turned them into pinwheels. Next, I took the long strips of lilac toile I cut from the quilt after I quilted it and used it for sashing between the pinwheels. I used some of the leftover sparkly silver/purple fabric also and made two matching pillow shams!

The sparkly fabric is for the flange so it perfectly matches the quilt!

I used a pale lavender thread to quilt leaves, flowers, and loops in the sashing. Just like on the triangles on the quilt, I quilted just inside the shape.

This next pic is from before I quilted all of it. You can really see how the stitches make all the shapes pop.

That's my Purple Quilt. Thanks for reading!